Zyber writes "Red Hat is sending 6 geeks to the beach where they will live in a luxury beachhouse. The contest involves locating the Gnome footprint throughout their website. While on vacation you will have to maintain a geekworld website as well as being "videotaped, photographed and documented for the world to see". Hmmm. Female geeks? " Don't we wish.

A member of Clan Anonymous Coward asks: "Does anyone know HOW to get these things to boot Linux? I have done a WWW search and found mailing-list messages that say it can be done. I have tried with Linux 2.0.36 off an LS 120 disk and all I got was continuous screenfuls of binary numbers scrolling off the screen. As far as I can determine LILO boot block did not even start execution. I tried formating the disk as /dev/hda and /dev/hda2 and both gave me similar results. The /dev/hda2 attempt had 'linear' in lilo.conf. Do I need a later version of lilo?"

Couple of interesting developments in Linux hardware lately. The Linux Store is selling super cheap linux boxes. news.com has a story about them where they proclaim that they will only be advertising on sites like Slashdot and Freshmeat except that Scoop doesn't even had ads, and I'd never heard of them before reading that article. An actual advertiser (Penguin Computing), however now has a 8 CPU Xeon Box that runs Linux (of course). First 8 CPU box I've seen running Linux (which I didn't even know could do 8 way SMP. Although I've been told of 32 and 64 chip linux boxes in development by other companies. No I can't name names).

jsparkes asks: "I haven't been able to find definitive information on mounting FAT32 filesystems in linux. It seems like it was implemented by Gordon Chaffee, who has this Fat32 homepage. It seems that it was added in 2.0.34 and should also be in 2.2.X. Does it work? Is just like an ext2 fs, or are there limitations? I'd like to dual boot linux and win98, but if I can't use my large FAT32 partitions, it would be pointless. (I have a 10G win98 drive, and will use a 1.2G for linux..)"

Couple of new Linux Portals to mention: An anonymous reader sent us a link to LinuxStart- a yahoo-ish Linux focused site, and FaKe wrote in to send us JustLinux.com. EmilEifrem sent us Earthweb's newly announced OpenSourceIT, which isn't a portal: More like a better designed LinuxWorld, with a cheesier name. It Debuts with the standard ESR and RMS profiles. All of these sites look pretty decent- its pretty excellent that Linux can support this much content. Anyone else remember when it was just Me and Scoop? We've come a long way. Very cool.

weink writes "Debian is in the process of getting their logo in order. The vote will take place in about a week. After the logo contest at GIMP, here are the options. " I am so happy that I have my Debian box running again. apt is so good for lazy sysadmins. Oh, and I vote for Raul's design. Super smooth.

Lampropeltis Alterna wrote in to tell us that Dell has bought equity in Red Hat. Another hat has been thrown into the ring. I've always thought of Dell as completely in bed with Microsoft, it'll be interesting to see how they follow this up.

TroyD sent us a link to a WSJ Article on Linux that Says Linux is Good, but that it lags behind its rivals. Troy also sent a choice quote from the article: "...Linux currently lacks some of the features demanded by corporations. [...] Among them are the ability to run simultaneously on many processors in a single computer and to keep a log of what the computer has done." Cool. I can save a lot of diskspace: rm -rf /var/log.

Anonymous Coward writes " Linus and maddog will be on a panel, along with a Microsoft guy (Jim Ewel) and someone from DH Brown (Tony Iams). This will be in Atlanta at the AIIM '99 conference. " The actual date will be April 14, 9-10 AM.

Smasher writes "The redesigned, more ambitious incarnation of Salon is now "completely rebuilt" around Linux and Apache. This is a great boost--Salon is a very popular site, and this gives Linux even more exposure to the mainstream. " We see Salon articles regularly on these pages. Glad to see them take the plunge. Update: 04/05 10:17 by CT : here's a news.com story on the same thing.

dave writes "There is a thin line between publishing groundless falsehoods about Linux (FUD) and writing about serious limitations that need to be addressed by the Linux community. Nathan Cochrane opens his first in a series of editorials on Linux Today about this very subject. "

irix sent us a link to an ABCNews Article on Linux's Growth. and says "I thought the predictions and overall analysis were pretty good coming from CNET. I was really amused to see a Microsoft banner ad on the top of the page :)"

REwT6 wrote in to say that Metalab, the archive formerly known as Sunsite, is shutting down. Having served the Linux and Open Source as the defacto clearing house for free software, it will be missed. Next week it will begin its new life as a mirror of download.com.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to a startling article where you can read the horrific account of Linux Users Rioting Outside Microsoft's Silicon Valley Headquarters. The article shows graphic pictures of Linux Users being dragged off by the police, as well as burning of MSN CDs. I thought such violence was limited to Mighigan State basketball fans.

K.G. writes "A Russian computer related news agency Computerra said today that Linus Torvalds will move to Moscow, quitting his job in Transmeta to develop a Linux compatible OS intended to run on the E2K processor from Elbrus International. In a russian-language article named "Closer to Dad" Computerra said that the factors that convinced Linus to move to Russia were "more interesting and promising job", closeness to his father who works as a Moscow correspondent for Finnish radio & TV, and a more familiar climate, similar to Linus's homeland Finland (they don't get a lot of snow in LA, do they... ). They also quoted the future boss of Linus, professor Boris Babayan: "The great professional qualities of Torvalds will help create a dependable OS for the E2K processor, fully compatible with Linux, in a tight deadline". "

Jamie writes "ESR tries to clear things up, and suggests a few things for the hacker culture's future. Read it from the mouth of the man. " This puts things more into perspective-and it's good to see things have simmered down a little bit.

NakNomik writes "IDC says "Other Operating Environments Will Have Trouble Keeping up with Linux's Growth" in its first ever forecast release about Linux. Read the release document over here. " Well, it's nice to see more people paying attention. And IDC gets the attention of the PHBs-for better or for worse.

Helmholtz writes "I just got done reading a very interesting article about Debian and Clueless Users that appeared on the Debian Weekly News site. I think this article would be a very good thing for users of all distributions to read, as it touches upon what might become a very real problem. Now that the word "Linux" has been splashed around by such 'heavyweights' as CNN and NPR, everyone who want to be seen as a 'cool computer guy' is trying to get Linux up. This of course is done without any heed to the absolute requirement that some Documentation-reading. And then these same people get angry when they try to install Linux and it doesn't 'just run'. I'm not try to harass anyone new to Linux, but I really think that it isn't emphasized enough that Linux is great because it requires some learning to occur. This is a concept that the Debian article holds at its core, I believe. "

Vic writes "SAP announced an equity investment of an undisclosed amount by the SAP Venture Fund in Red Hat Software, adding more support to the Linux bandwagon and the open source movement. " So SAP is big in Germany? Why would Red Hat be interested in Germany? Can you spell S.u.S.E?

Insomniacs of the world unite: Linus has bestowed kernel 2.2.5 upon us. Looks as though some sparc64 fixes were applied, some IPv4 and IPv6 updates were included. This should prevent lock-ups on sparc64 machines, hopefully. Don't know about ega fbcon, though. Can't wait for 2.2.5ac1, though...PLEASE USE A MIRROR. Sorry to shout, but it's very important that the files can be mirrored, and that the hardcore kernel hackers can get their patches.